Friday, October 12, 2007

Pip, Pip Hurray!

Yesterday morning it was widely believed that Britney Spears would be skipping an appearance in court yesterday despite her desire to have the judge in her child custody case amend his current custody order to allow her to enjoy overnight visitation with her sons Sean Preston and Jayden James. At first, her lawyer explained to the court that Britney was suffering from an eye malady (it turns out that pink eye was the culprit) and couldn't attend (which, quite honestly, is the stupidest thing I think I've ever heard) but at some point yesterday afternoon, Britney's medical condition cleared up and she managed to make her way to court. Of course there was a huge clusterf*ck of photogs trying to photograph her much-anticipated arrival in court (as you can see in the pics below). In the end Britney managed to eke out a ruling that allows her one overnight visitation stay with her children per week ... that is, under the supervision of a court-appointed monitor:

Britney Spears will get one overnight visit with her kids per week -- at least for now. L.A. County Court Commissioner Scott Gordon partially accepted her lawyer's plea to give Spears monitored overnight visitation. Spears, who was in court, was sworn in as the afternoon hearing began. She testified, but we don't know what she said. Spears left the courtroom visibly upset. The overnight visits will be monitored. The parties have not reached an agreement on choosing a different monitor than the one who is already in place. A court spokesman said today was the result of a compromise between the two sides -- Brit wanted more, K-Fed didn't want her to have any overnights. Altho, according to TMZ, it's amazing that Britney got anything at all ... apparently her behavior in court left much to be desired and prolly ended up making the situation worse than it already was: TMZ has learned Britney Spears had quite the interaction today with L.A. County Commissioner Scott Gordon, and she dug a hole deeper than a Louisiana swamp. We're told Spears had a back and forth with the Commish that lasted approximately 40 minutes. She constantly interrupted him and at times was extremely sarcastic. At one point she started thanking the judge for what he had done, but her tone was heavily laced with disdain. We're told the Commish explained to Spears how she had gotten to the point she's at -- why defying the various orders she was supposed to comply with raised concerns that she was not a responsible person. Spears didn't get it. She was at times contentious, argumentative and condescending. We're told K-Fed's lawyer didn't object to her testimony, it was so bad. One description of today's testimony, pretty simple -- "Appalling." Blah. Why am I not surprised? I suppose one should take heart in the somewhat positive outcome of yesterday's court hearing ... it just seems so plainly obvious that it would be easy for Britney to prove to the court that she should be able to spend more time with her sons ... all she has to do is the complete opposite of everything that she normally does. [Source, Source]

Baby steps, folks. At least she's taking positive baby steps. I understand that Britney is trying to get the judge to approve her mother as the court-appointed parenting coach monitor in her custody case so that Lynne would be the one to oversee Britney's visits with her children rather than a stranger. It's unclear whether or not the judge will go for this but I be Kevin Federline would approve. He has been tight with the Spears ever since his divorce from Britney and has allowed them to watch/take care of the children whenever he could. At least things seem to be getting between Britters and Mama Lynne ... hopefully things will continue to strengthen in the family over all. [Source]

One last bit of Britness, Sony BMG Germany is listing the tracklist to Britney's new album Blackout as this:

And BreatheHeavy says that THIS will be the cover artwork. At this point, it's hard to believe anything ... the tracklist looks about right but the album artwork looks HORRRRRIBLE. I hope it turns out to be a fake.

UPDATE: BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! It turns out that this HORRRRRRIBLE artwork is, in fact, the official artwork -- according to People magazine, who rarely gets this sort of thing wrong:

I'm more than dismayed that the powers that be think that recycling this one image over and over and over again is a good idea. We first saw this picture of Britney when it was used as her official promo picture for her appearance on the 2007 MTV VMAs in September, then we saw the same image used as the cover artwork for her hit single Gimme More ... AND NOW they are using it AGAIN as the cover artwork for the full album Blackout. So disappointing. What else can be done to further sabotage the potential success of this album? I know, maybe they can do something to every copy sold to make it smell like feet ... that sounds about right. [Source]

Tori Amos participated in an online webchat with visitors to her official website at ToriAmos.com yesterday afternoon and did her best to field the barrage of questions that flooded in. Tori herself has confessed that she's not all that tech savvy but she managed to hold her own thruout the webchat and offered some great answers to some great questions. Here are a few screencaps from the chat:

The chat was held in the NYC offices of Epic Records in the office of my friend Abe (you can see his head peek into the frame a couple of times, right around the time that Abe's phone began to ring and Tori answered it, told the person on the other line that Abe couldn't talk right now and then hung up -- LOL!) Tori was asked a lot of questions about why she hasn't been to this or that city around the world and she explained how the tour booking process is handled (ie. she has no control on where she goes on tour). She revealed that the official bootlegs being offered from this tour will be available in digital format only at first, with hard copies possibly down the line of the best shows of the tour. She talked a bit about the musical she is collaborating on (mentioning it would be released in 2009), a bit about how her 7-year old daughter Tash is loving NYC and is going around town with her own little entourage to see all her favorite musicals and she mentioned that she would never write another book again (she's happy writing music instead). The chat was amazing ... someone offered to bring her pot along the way on the tour and Tori revealed that there are some members of her crew that might appreciate that gesture :) In case you missed it yesterday, you can click HERE to watch the entire webchat again and again and again. It really is brills! [Source]

Last night, Tori Amos played the first of two shows here in NYC at the WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden ... here are a few pics from the show:

People ... this tour is amazing. I stayed away from any descriptions of how things go down on this tour and I'm glad that I kept it a surprise. The Pip character opened the show and she looked HOT in her rubber leggings and black hair. Her performance was spirited ... especially The Waitress. I was able to snap a few more shots from my seat which I will post below ... along with a short clip of Tori performing Big Wheel. I will be seeing Tori Amos again 4 more times on this tour (Detroit, Cleveland, Anaheim and LA) with my BFF Sarah (who I missed last night) and I'm so excited for what's to come!!! More deets from last night's show below. [Source]

Down in OZ, Good Charlotte played the first of their Australian shows in Sydney last night ... here are a few pics:

Again, rumors that Joel Madden and Nicole Richie are to be married in Laguna Beach on October 13th cannot be believed since the band will remain in OZ thruout the rest of the weekend (they play Melbourne on the 13th). Ah well ... I guess we'll have to wait for the next rumor to surface. [Source]

That That have received rave reviews from fans and critics after kicking off their European tour in spectacular style. Gary Barlow, Jason Orange, Mark Owen and Howard Donald took to the stage at Belfast's Odyssey Arena last night for a highly charged two-hour show. It's their second tour since the group reformed in 2005 - ten years after parting ways. The group opened the show with Reach Out and went on to play a string of their greatest hits including Patience, Never Forget and Back For Good. Dressed in voodoo costumes, they thrilled the crowd with a surprise remix of Relight My Fire, which sampled the wildly popular Gnarls Barkley hit Crazy ... Earlier this month, the band were named as the faces of Marks & Spencer menswear and have also been tipped for an Oscar for their song Rule, the theme song to the movie Stardust. The boys to men of Take That have really grown up lots since their early teeny bopper days. Since they were from the UK, I wasn't able to get much info on the band in the early 90s (when they broke on the scene) but they were deffo on my radar (I did have their first album) and I considered myself a fan (and am still a fan of Robbie Williams. After all, they were the only boyband brave enough to pose for photos like THIS. [Source]

Okay ... so seriously, I have to insist that all y'all make plans to be in front of your TVs tomorrow to catch the television premiere of the hit Broadway show Legally Blonde on MTV ... OR at the very least, set those DVRs/TiVos/VCRs to record the show when it airs at 1PM ET:

The fine folks at MTV messengered me a DVD screener of the show set to air on MTV tomorrow and, let me tell you, it looks damn good. I really enjoyed the show when I saw it live for myself earlier this year but the recorded version really manages to capture the spirit and fun of the live show. I promise, if y'all like reading Pink is the new Blog then I suspect you're gonna love this show, too! WATCH IT, WATCH IT, WATCH IT! [Source]

Last night, the cast of Legally Blonde got together to preview the recorded for MTV version here in NYC and my good buddy Brett (aka Cajun Boy in the City) was kind enough to snap a few pics and send them along for the blog:

SOOOOOOOO ... now it's your turn. I want you to grab your friends, siblings, pets, stuffed animals, strangers on the street -- whoever -- and get together for a Legally Blonde on MTV watch party tomorrow (or anytime that the show airs this weekend) and send me your photos. Make signs, make cakes, make it really disgustingly pink but be sure to email me some pics from your parties. I wanna see how much fun y'all can have with this great event. I'll be posting y'alls pics next week (after Sunday to give y'all a chance to organize your parties) so SEND THEM IN please ... thanks! [thanks Cajun Boy in the City]

Party-loving royal Prince Harry stepped out for his first solo public engagement in five years. Shrugging off allegations he was work-shy, the third-in-line the throne mingled with volunteer charity workers at an evening reception just a short distance from his central London home. The last time the Prince, 23, performed a lone royal commitment engagement was in 2002 to mark his 18th birthday. Harry picked charity MapAction, a group that co-ordinates relief efforts with maps when disasters strike worldwide, for the solo engagement. He is the royal patron of the organisation, which held the reception to mark 50 successful missions at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, in Parliament Square, just a few minutes walk from his private apartment at St James' Palace. Pshaw ... and people think that Harry is too hard a partier to care about issue of public Royal commitment. See, he cares, y'all ... and he looks good too, so there. [Source]

Beyonce has tackled the music industry, the acting industry, the fashion industry and the fragrance industry (well, sorta, while she doesn't have her own celebrity fragrance, she is the face of the perfume Emporio Armani Diamond) ... and now she's ready to take on the mobile phone industry. B was on hand yesterday to unveil the new Samsung phone -- the bPhone:

The bPhone is just a red version of the already launched Samsung UpStage mobile phone ... and while it may be cool for fans of Beyonce to have a phone with her name on it (I'd want my bPhone to be a Britney Spears phone, with all the speed dials programmed for fast food restaurants) I don't know that Apple (creators of the iPhone) have anything to worry about. [Source]

Lindsay Lohan and new boyfriend Riley Giles are already full swing back in the habit of going out every day, just one week after L. Lo was released from her in-house rehab treatment program at the Cirque Lodge in Utah ... except instead of going to bars and clubs they're going to stores and more stores ... like Victoria's Secret:

Spending money on clothes and things is much better than spending money on other recreational substances which can prove addicting ... so I fully endorse this new behavior. I'd much prefer seeing Lindsay stumble out of clothes stores because she was breaking in new shoes rather than seeing her passed out in car seats at 4AM on the streets of Hollywood. [Source]

Ruh-ro ... is there trouble in paradise already between Pamela Anderson and new hubby Rick Solomon? The pair were snapped in what looks to be a heated exchange at Tryst Nightclub in Las Vegas ... which just so happened to be their first public outing since getting married last weekend ... I wonder what the problem was:

Yeah, it usually takes about a week for Pamela Anderson to rethink the whole "marriage" thing so if things are starting to fall apart already then I'd say they are right on schedule. [Source]

Enrique Iglesias paid a visit to Indigo Nightclub in the fictional town of Genoa City, Wisconsin this week ... he will be appearing on a future episode of The Young and the Restless ... and here are a few pics from the set:

Being a Y&R fan, I usually hate when they incorporate musical guests on the show because it takes away from the bitchy drama that I tune in for ... but I might not mind so much Enrique's guest appearance (I find him much more palatable since he lasered off that gross mole). I just hope he follows the soap opera trend and manages to get his shirt off at least for some portion of the show. [Source]

Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s climate change panel won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for spreading awareness of man-made climate change and laying the foundations for counteracting it. Gore, whose film on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth," won an Academy Award earlier this year, had been widely tipped to win Friday's prize, which expanded the Norwegian committee's interpretation of peacemaking and disarmament efforts that have traditionally been the award's foundations. "We face a true planetary emergency," Gore said. "The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity." The Nobel committee chairman, Ole Danbolt Mjoes, asserted that the prize was not aimed at the Bush administration, which rejected Kyoto and was widely criticized outside the U.S. for not taking global warming seriously enough. "We would encourage all countries, including the big countries, to challenge, all of them, to think again and to say what can they do to conquer global warming," Mjoes said. "The bigger the powers, the better that they come in front of this." Two Gore advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to share his thinking, said the award will not make it any more likely that he will seek the presidency in 2008. If anything, the Peace Prize makes the rough-and-tumble of a presidential race less appealing to Gore, they said, because now he has a huge, international platform to fight global warming and may not want to do anything to diminish it. One of the advisers said that while Gore is unlikely to rule out a bid in the coming days, the prospects of the former vice president entering the fray in 2008 are "extremely remote." I think it's a very good idea that Al Gore stay away from running for the presidency since his environmental work is so successful. I think he has the ability to affect more chance in this role rather than gambling again on winning the US presidency. Kudos to Al Gore and his efforts to raise awareness on this issue ... despite the fact that haters will bitch and moan about this award, I really think that Gore's work in this capacity has great merit. The award is very deserved. [Source]

And finally, Dr. McDreamyPatrick Dempsey graces the cover of the annual Entertainment Weekly Photo Issue which hits newsstands this week ... here are a few pics:

McDreamy indeed, EW was wise to put this hotness on the cover. It's too bad there is only one pic of Patrick sans shirt but I ain't one to complain. This issue looks to be a keeper. [Source]

Okay ... so last night's Tori Amos concert here in NYC at the WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden was utterly superb. I wasn't really expecting anything of the show ... I just wanted it to unfold in front of my eyes and unfold it did. When Tori came out dressed as Pip in her yellow top and rubber leggings I about died. She really was a different person all dolled up that way. I was supposed to get a photo pass to shoot pics from the stage at the beginning of the show but because of a few technicalities, it didn’t' work out (hopefully I'll be able to shoot future shows along the way) but I did managed to take some pics from my seats (apparently the Theater had no objections, there were cameras going off everywhere) and here are a few of my pics along with the show's setlist:

Act I – Pip

CruelBlissFat SlutSmokey JoeTeenage HustlingThe Waitress

Interlude/Costume change

Professional Widow (Remix)

Act II – Tori

Big WheelCrucifyPancakeCornflake GirlBells For HerSiren

T & Bö

Silent All These YearsCool On Your IslandCooling [complete with Brambles bridge]

Band Returns

Digital GhostHotelCode Red

Encore 1

Precious ThingsBouncing Off Clouds

Encore 2

Hey Jupiter

The show was absolutely fabulous. Hotel and Siren were great surprises (actually, every song was a nice surprise since I haven't been following setlists) and I was thrilled to FINALLY hear Cooling in its entirety live. I wanted to record one short vid so here is a clip of Tori performing Big Wheel (from the MILF point on):

Tori did a great little improv at the start of the T & Bö portion of the show ... she sang about how much she missed us, an incident where she threw her shoe at someone in the front row of one of her previous shows and had to have her big bodyguard get the shoe back before it got sold on eBay and how on her recent plane ride to the states her seat went jiggle, jiggle, jiggle as she caught her 7-year old daughter playing with her "privates" in the seat next to her. Classic Tori story. I ended up taking a few photos, all of them can be seen HERE.

I had a absolute blast but it felt weird to see Tori without Sarah ... I'm looking forward to sharing future shows with her. After the show we met up with a bunch of our friends (Mike and his sister are in town this weekend) at a place in Hell's Kitchen called Vlada ... here are some pics:

I was happily showing off my new rubber boots (it was raining like crazy yesterday, I needed them to trudge thru the downpour) and a great time was had by all.